


we scanned this wasted land for life

by skyvehicle



Category: Lymond Chronicles - Dorothy Dunnett
Genre: F/M, also learning languages!, but honestly i have no idea how to tag this, francis might not be in the best frame of mind to make healthy choices, set between Pawn in Frankincense and The Ringed Castle, some sexual weirdness, some weird stuff going on between them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 11:03:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13270101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyvehicle/pseuds/skyvehicle
Summary: Traveling north into unfamiliar territory with unfamiliar people, Lymond learns to speak.





	we scanned this wasted land for life

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was very much inspired by the frigid winter currently keeping me buried under a mountain of blankets and drowning in mug after mug of hot tea. stay warm, everyone!

It was the cold that roused him.

He woke wrapped in blankets and furs and did little more than lie curled up beneath them for the first leg of the journey. There was no urgency left in his illness, just a desperate exhaustion that hollowed him out entirely, leaving him useless and burdened with a profound disinterest in rejoining the world.

It was the cold that did it.

The first chilled breeze stirred him from his aimlessness and sent him wrapping his blankets tighter around his shivering body, the first active choice he’d made since slipping out of his sickroom in the middle of the night to join the Khatun. It was more than just a breeze - it was a breeze with ice in it, smelling of winter and snow. It was the breeze to signify the changing of the seasons — or the changing of the climate, as Lymond had at least been able to recognize from his glimpses of the sun that they have been traveling north.

It eventually became unbearable to just lie there and shiver. He needed to be active, if only to keep warm.

That night, when they stopped to make camp, Lymond wrapped himself in furs and stepped out of the caravan. 

As he watched the men building fires, pitching tents and taking care of the horses, Lymond was overcome with frustration at their redundant and inefficient methods. He’d have liked to step in, but these were not his men. He didn’t even speak their language, unless there were some english speakers among them who just hadn’t made themselves known. Doubtful.

He spotted Guzel seated by a fire, her posture regal and distinct. She noticed him on his approach and raised her chin, an invitation.

Guzel didn’t ride with him every day. More often than not, Lymond found himself alone with only his thoughts for company, and only the rocking of the carriage for distraction. On days when Guzel was not riding with her household, she shared the caravan with Lymond but hardly paid him any mind, neither addressing nor speaking with him unless he was in her way or he spoke first. Lymond spent much of the journey thus far lost in his own thoughts, so he and Guzel did not speak much.

“Allow me to express my gratitude," he said to her.

“I have given you nothing,” she said, her face a mask of indifference.

“Then allow me to make myself useful. I have taken advantage of your hospitality for too long.”

“You can help Anatoly,” she said, gesturing at a hairless old man who was removing the harness from the mules that pulled the caravan. “Ride with him. Let him teach you what he does.”

Anatoly spoke no english. The language he and the other of the men spoke was familiar to Lymond only in the sense that he had been listening to them speak it since joining up with the Khatun.

The following day, Anatoly taught Lymond, wordless, how to harness the mules for the caravan. Lymond sat up front with him as he drove the cart. As the sun rose and warmed the earth below, the old man taught Lymond some words for things they saw on the road. Bird. Tree. Stream. Cloud. Sun.

It was hardly enough to be relevant in the assimilation of a new language, but Lymond reveled in the unfamiliarity of it all, entirely unlike anything he’d ever known. 

His hair was growing. The wind kept blowing it into his eyes. He’d had it cut short to stop the Aga from tugging on it, and it was even longer now than it had been before. He would have liked to have it trimmed again, but he had not yet learned the words to ask for what he would need.

But rock, he could say. Dust. Mule. Wind. Perhaps he would soon have enough words to express how he felt. Then again, he could hardly do so even in his own tongue.

Grass, though. Hill. Sky.

 

 

A few days later, he learned the word for snow.

 

 

It was for the cold that she suggested sharing his furs. It was for body heat, she claimed, that she divested herself of her clothing, waiting for him to do the same before slipping under the blankets to join him.

She was very warm.

He used his hands on her then, reacquainting himself with the giving of pleasure. He wanted to thank her for what she had done, for scraping him up off the road and carting him away from that which was unbearable — from his life. Greece had been a warm and sweltering climate, but it could not compare to the heat of her body sliding up against his. He wanted to thank her, but did not have the words, even in english, to express his gratitude sufficiently.

He did not kiss her, and so her mouth was free to moan expressions of her own gratitude as she writhed beneath him. Held down by the weight of his thumb pressing and rubbing in the one place where all her pleasure focused to a point, she shook with tremors, coming entirely undone.

Afterwards, she tried to reciprocate. 

“You owe me nothing,” he said, his eyes meeting hers in the dark.

She did not answer, only parroted his words back to him in Russian. He repeated the unfamiliar words, committing them to memory. He remained flaccid in her warm and deft hands. 

When she took him in her mouth, he wanted to laugh. At least, that was how he chose to classify the strangled cry that wrenched itself from his throat as she closed her warm lips around him. It was a baseless thing, without language, without identity, so Lymond could call it what he wanted, regardless of what it actually was.

Laughter. As if he even could.

The experience was not a total loss, for he learned many new words that night. Leg. Foot. Arm. Chest. Neck. Mouth. Lips. Hands. Heat.

 

 

They lay that way on occasion, coupled without coupling. Guzel continued with her attempts to rouse him, never to any success. It did not happen every night, which was well. Lymond did not sleep on nights when Guzel shared his bed, and he now had reason to rest. Guzel’s men had begun allowing him to join them on their scouting and hunting trips.

Lymond learned many new words on these trips. Goose. Deer. Bow. Arrow. Meat. Enemy.

He also learned just how badly out of shape his body was. He spent most of the day following his first hunt lying on the floor of the caravan, sore and exhausted, and disinclined to move. When Guzel came, she helped him out of his clothes, heated some oil between her palms, and massaged his spent muscles.

So exhausted was he that he didn’t even notice he was drifting off to sleep until he was being shaken awake, the sounds of his own shouting still ringing in his ears.

“Control yourself,” Guzel said harshly, her hair falling over her face like a curtain. In the dark, Lymond could barely see more than the whites of her eyes. The furs of his bedding were soft, clutched in his hands. The floor beneath him was hard. The air was cold, and his harsh breathing produced little clouds on every exhale. It had been just a dream, a fact that Lymond was growing more confident in by the second.

“How… say it again,” Lymond croaked, his voice rough, pushing himself up into a seated position. “In Russian, please.”

She did, and he repeated her. It sounded soothing, almost musical, entirely devoid of the harshness of Guzel’s initial admonishment. His breathing had almost returned to normal.

“You think they hear?” he asked, in Russian, his eyes drifting to the door of the caravan.

“They will think I am giving you pleasure,” Guzel said, careful to only use words in this foreign tongue she knew he would understand.

“You do giving me pleasure,” he said, paying close attention to his pronunciation. “Very much.”

Words had always been paramount to Lymond, and he felt like it should be wrong how poorly he knew he was speaking, how like an uneducated child. And yet… he found himself untroubled. His speech was halting and slow, but his progress was tangible. Every day his vocabulary was expanding, every day his pronunciation improved. Every day he sought out conversation with the other men, immersing himself in the unfamiliarity of their language.

It would not be long, he knew, before his words would catch up to his intellect.

Guzel was watching him, a curious expression on her face. They were far enough apart that if extended his arm he would still not be able to reach her, sitting as she was with her back straight as a rod, her hands folded demurely in her lap.

“Yes,” she said. “I am trying to.”

She left him soon after, giving him space to sleep alone. The next morning, Lymond was up at first light, roused by the sound of the men breaking down and packing up the camp. He rose from his warm furs, laced up his boots, joined them.

 

 

“You are learning quickly,” said the man known as Viktor, who worked as cook in Kiaya Khatun’s household.

“No. I am very slow,” Lymond conceded. “Very bad.”

They were both on horseback, scouting a few miles ahead of the caravan.

“Surely, this is modesty!”

“As a child, I learned so much words.” Lymond didn’t know numbers, so he held up the appropriate amount of fingers. “Very easy, for me.”

“So many languages,” the man said, correcting him.

“So many languages,” Lymond repeated. “Thank you. It was easy when children. Much difficulty, now.”

“Easier when you’re a child,” Viktor said. “It is much harder, now.”

Lymond nodded and repeated. This was the way he conversed now, shuffling forward half blind, groping for stubborn sounds that felt wrong in his mouth, then doubling back to amend his inevitable mistakes. He understood much of what was said to him, but everything he said seemed incorrect in some way or another.

“I speak stupid, now,” Lymond said. “Like a child.”

“Perhaps,” said Viktor, who could speak only one language. “But children will learn. Children will grow up.”

“Not all child,” Lymond muttered, kicking furiously at his mare’s flanks.

“Not _every _child,” Viktor said, but by then Lymond had already galloped too far ahead to hear him.__

____

____

 

 

That night, Lymond couldn’t get warm. He burrowed under his blankets and furs, but couldn’t stop shivering.

Guzel came to him, but was arrested by the sight of him, stopping abruptly as the door flap swung shut behind her.

“Are you ill?”

“Cold,” Lymond said through chattering teeth.

The mere suggestion of illness filled him with disgusted fury. He’d lost months of his life to illness and had no intention of losing even one day more. It was cold. It was winter, and it was cold. And he and Guzel were well accustomed to keeping warm.

“Perhaps… if you would lie with me…”

“Pathetic,” Guzel hissed, keeping her distance.

Lymond had to agree with her. Truly, he was pathetic. He tried again. “Then perhaps you could f-fetch me something warm t-to… to drink.”

Had Guzel taken offense to Lymond’s request, she didn’t show it. She was a woman of wealth and importance, not one to be sent on errands for men who were in her debt.

Instead, she closed the remaining distance between them and knelt down. Her hands, finding his cheeks, felt to Lymond as if he had just thrust his head into a fireplace. Then she pressed her lips to his forehead, and Lymond quite swiftly forgot how to breathe.

“No fever,” Guzel pronounced, pulling away and rising back to her feet. “You should sleep.”

“Would you…” He didn’t know what he had wanted to say. He didn’t know what he wanted.

Guzel, fortunately, relieved him from having to complete the thought. “I will not stay with you like this. Sleep.”

“What are… what language were we speaking, just now?”

“English. So much for your practice, I suppose.”

Lymond was struck dumb, without any language at all. By the time his mind had caught up, Guzel had already left him alone, shivering in the dark. 

 

 

The following morning, Lymond was well again. Whatever odd spell of weakness had come over him had passed just as swiftly, and he packed up camp and mounted with the rest of the men.

Guzel, dressed in finery, rode behind with her household. She did not address Lymond, nor did she even look at him.

A shriek from above, and the sound of displaced air, distracted Lymond from trying to address her.

“Huge bird,” Lymond said, shielding his eyes from the sun as he squinted up, marveling at the powerful flaps that propelled the thing forward.

“No,” said Viktor, coming up beside him on his own horse.

That morning, Lymond learned a new word. Eagle.

**Author's Note:**

> as always, thanks to R for the help and encouragement.


End file.
